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Greenfield Wins Sundance Director Prize

Lauren Greenfield won the prize for best director of a US documentary at the Sundance Film Festival for her film, “The Queen of Versailles.” The prize was announced January 28 at the end of the festival for independent films.

Greenfield, a photographer and director whose previous documentaries include “Thin,” an HBO film on anorexia, was honored for her direction of a non-fiction film about a real estate mogul who tried to build the biggest house in America, only to be hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis. Earlier in the week, Magnolia Pictures bought the rights to distribute “The Queen of Versailles” in North America, and plans to release it this summer.

Reviewing the list of other award winners at the Festival, two more photographers’ names caught our attention.

“Chasing Ice,” directed by Jeff Orlowski, which documents how nature photographer James Balog has used time-lapse photography to show the shrinking of arctic glaciers over the years, won the award for Excellence in Cinematography in a US Documentary.

In the World Cinema category, “Valley of Saints,” written and directed by Musa Syeed, won the Audience Award for dramatic film. The director of photography on the film was Yoni Brook, a photographer and filmmaker known to us as a former PDN‘s 30.

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